Governor kicks off solar garden project at Venetucci Farm

David Amster-Olszewski was standing in the dust at Venetucci Farm dressed in a tie and jeans, shaking hands and shaking his head.

"It's so fast," he said of the rushed months that led up to the Tuesday's groundbreaking for Colorado Springs' first community solar garden, built by Amster-Olszewski's company SunShare.

Six months ago, launching a company to build community solar gardens, in which residents lease solar panels in a central installation rather than putting them on their own roofs, was little more than a dream for the 24-year-old Colorado College graduate.

On Tuesday, the first  of what will be 500 kilowatts worth of solar panels were going on the racks at Venetucci and Gov. John Hickenlooper and a crowd of several hundred turned up for the groundbreaking.

Hickenlooper praised Amster-Olszewski's vision.

"This kid, David Amster-Olszewski, sounds like such a driven individual, I wanted to meet him," the governor said. "I can't wait to see how this business grows."

Hickenlooper's presence brought a disruption from roughly a dozen Occupy Colorado Springs protesters, who broke up the ceremony for several minutes with chants, but even they didn't want to cast a cloud over the solar garden project.

"We're here in support of the solar garden," said protester Hossein Forouzandeh. "Thi sis just an avenue and an opportunity for us to address the governor."

Amster-Olszewski planned to launch his solar garden project elsewhere in the state, but a chance meeting with Council President Pro Tem Jan Martin made him realize that Colorado Springs Utilities could move faster on the idea than the investor-owned utilities in Denver and Boulder, which are overseen by the Public Utilities Commission.

In August, he set up  SunShare with two friends. In September, the City Council unanimously approved a rate tariff allowing solar gardens to offer benefits similar to what homeowners receive from Utilities. In October, SunShare announced a deal with the Pikes Peak Community Foundation to locate its solar garden at Venetucci, in return for solar panels that will cover part of the farm's energy use. On Tuesday, the first panels were installed. And in December, the installation of 2,500 solar panels is scheduled to be complete and they will begin delivering power.

As an encore, Amster-Olszewski is hoping to lease the last 900 panels in the garden by Christmas, then begin working on a second garden in January. After that, he and SunShare are looking for other projects the company can tackle locally and also eyeing possibilities in the Denver area.

"As I was driving in today, I saw the Drake coal-fired power plant," Amster-Olszewski told the crowd on Tuesday. "The way we used energy for the last 100 years does not have to be the way we use energy in the future."

The smooth sailing is unlikely to last forever for SunShare. Another solar garden company, Clean Energy Collective, plans to open its own solar garden in Colorado Springs in the next month, and still other competitors are likely to jump in the Denver market. But on Tuesday, Amster-Olszewski was reveling in the sunshine.